I posted this at Reddit yesterday.
To set the stage: I’m an American-born male, left intact at the height of the U.S. circumcision craze. I was married for a long time to a girl who loved my foreskin. Now we're divorced, and I’m on the market.
I met a woman on a dating site few weeks ago. Then we met in real life, and I was pleasantly surprised that she looked better than her photos.
She’s a nurse who worked for years at the VA, then went into administration at a big hospital. Three kids including one boy, all over 16. We clicked immediately and enjoyed a range of in-depth conversations. For example, when I used the phrase, "relationships and sexuality," she asked me if I thought a relationship was necessary for sex. Turns out that, although her profile said "no hookups," she didn’t think so.
In fact, we made out for a while in my car at the end of our third date. So I started making plans for our next date to end a little early, with my place as the landing spot.
As I'm getting to know a girl, I usually make some effort to find out what she thinks of circumcision, as long as I don’t have to stretch to get to the topic. I’m not insecure about my foreskin, but if I can find out a girl is opposed to circumcision, it’s a bonus for both of us.
As it happens, [Login to see the link] was screening in our city soon. So I asked her if she’d like to attend. (We had this conversation via text.)
The first thing that came to her mind was that in her work at the VA, she had some difficulty making condom catheters work with the uncircumcised men. (I have heard the "elderly men don't take care of their foreskins" argument for circumcising infants, but this was a twist.) I asked what she thought they would use for catheters in Europe, as a way of testing whether she knew circumcision wasn't universal. She said she wasn’t sure.
I said I had worked as an intactivist in the past, so the topic was important to me. Then she said she believed circumcision prevented diseases and helped with hygiene, so she was an advocate for it. She asked if I had circumcised my sons, and I said no. I didn’t have to ask if she had done it to her boy.
Finally, she flat-out asked, “Are you?” and I replied that I was among the lucky few in my birth year who were not circumcised.
She said she would rather not see the film. So I let that go and changed the subject.
Then, although we'd had excellent rapport up to that point, she suddenly took exception to something I texted a few minutes later. She wrote, "I’ll have to process this." Then she stopped texting, unmatched me on the dating site, and I haven’t heard from her since.
So, even though she didn’t say it, I can guess what she was thinking: She's afraid to deal with an intact penis, and she found someway to reject me without saying so.
Maybe she did it out of respect for my feelings. But I also think she knows deep down that mutilating boys is indefensible. And like the circumcised father who circumcises his son to "be like Daddy," she’s avoiding the truth, which is: She’s invested in circumcision and doesn't want to question her beliefs.
Worst case, she might also be a controlling, castrating woman and won't admit it to herself.
And you know what? I don’t care. She may never know [Login to see the link]. At least she won't learn it from me.
